Book Reviews and Other Literary Delights

Finding My Badass Self: A Year of Truths and Dares

Thank you to She Writes Press for providing me with an advance copy of Sherry Stanfa-Stanley’s Finding My Badass Self: A Year of Truths and Dares, in exchange for an honest review.

PLOT– When Sherry Stanfa-Stanley turned fifty-two, she decided to challenge herself by facing fifty-two activities that would take her outside of her comfort zone. Finding My Badass Self: A Year of Truth and Dares documents Stanfa-Stanley’s quest to seek adventure and push her boundaries.

LIKE– Stanfa-Stanley is funny and relatable. It’s easy to root for her as she overcomes personal obstacles, like conquering her fear of heights by going zip lining and riding in a hot air balloon. I think it helps that Stanfa-Stanley is a rather normal person chasing her dreams. She’s middle-aged and not in peak shape, yet she attempts adventures. She doesn’t have a large budget for her ideas and no one is financially backing her, another element that will make readers feel empowered: If Stanfa-Stanley can achieve her goals, so can you. Get off that couch!

My favorite challenge was when Stanfa-Stanley threw a party for strangers. She asked her friends to invite someone that they knew, but someone that she had not previously met to a party that Stanfa-Stanley was hosting. The friends were not invited, only the strangers. This meant that Stanfa-Stanley was hosting a party and didn’t know who was going to knock at her door and none of the other people, knew each other. It was a grand experiment that was a huge success. I absolutely love the idea of a strangers party, especially how it lent itself to diversity in the participants. Although it happened that only women showed up ( men were invited), the women were different ages and from a variety of backgrounds. I think this is a marvelous idea for expanding your social circle. It was heart warming to learn that many of the women stayed in touch,

DISLIKE- Previous to Finding My Badass Self, I had not heard of Stanfa-Stanley. I now know that she has a blog in which readers can follow her adventures. Finding My Badass Self reads like a compilation of blog entries, which I think it might have been. I question the necessity of turning the blog entries into a book. If I was following her blog, it would be delightful to read a few entries at a time and catch up with her life, but as a book, it was tedious. I think a fix would have been to change the format and provide more introspection before moving to the next challenge. There needed to be a bridge between the entries. Not all of the challenges were equally interesting or inspiring, which also contributed to the uneven pacing.

RECOMMEND– Maybe. I’d definitely recommend checking out Stanfa-Stanley’s blog. She’s humorous and you might find the inspiration to chase one of your own dreams. I’m just not sure that Finding My Badass Self is a better recommendation than just checking out her blog.